


so maybe tonight I'll be the libertine

by ihaveacleverfandomurl



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Big Bang 2020, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - No Exy (All For The Game), Angst, Best Friends, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Road Trips, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:47:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26138344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihaveacleverfandomurl/pseuds/ihaveacleverfandomurl
Summary: Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard have been best friends since they were small. But attending college halfway across the country from each other has strained their relationship, and Andrew won’t take it anymore — as soon as term is over, they’re going on the road trip of a lifetime.Andrew can absolutely handle spending the entire summer with Neil in the passenger’s seat, sharing hotel rooms and cigarettes and diner booths. Because he’s definitely not in love with him.It’ll be fine.
Relationships: Neil Josten & Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 42
Kudos: 351
Collections: AFTG Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> IT’S AFTG BIG BANG 2020 TIME!! I'll be postin these fic chapters every few days until September 10th!  
> emo long note lol: despite having AFTG be my favorite fandom and creating an awful lot of content for it over the past 4 years, I haven’t tried to write My One Big Fic for it, much less the kind that Andreil deserves where it’s just slow burn mutual pining, falling head over heels. here’s what started as trying my hand at that…except it just turned into a lot of very messy very venty feelings that probably veer ooc at times, apologies. But this fic is very near and dear to my heart and i may have cried a good bit over it so please,,, be kind to it,, thank u  
> thanks so much to noah aka [lizardteeths](https://lizardteeths.tumblr.com/) for trompin through this mess with me while we were all just dealing with actual hell aka the world rn,, i cant believe he’s so talented and please check out [the beautiful art he did for this fic i’m so fuckin blessed](https://n0ahdraws.tumblr.com/628076645875597312/tumblr_lyCmeNpcHLlZgDtQy) (catch it embedded in the fic too!!)  
> thanks to eli aka [poetic_ivy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetic_ivy/pseuds/poetic_ivy) for betaing when she had her own wild schedule i’m also so blessed ur my wife thanks 4 helpin set me back on track always and givin me so much lov when i'm freakin abt plot points and texting generators ilysm  
> inspired by [this post](https://gayarsonist.tumblr.com/post/187379007148/) abt best friend summer roadtrips where you're secretly in love with them by (edited for blog change!) gayarsonist & title from Collar Full by Panic! At The Disco, of course

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter cw: self harm, vomit mention, mention of Nathan murdering an individual  
> this first chapter has been me trying to establish past circumstances and Andrew interrupting every five seconds with pining,, also gotta be real, again, this may be a bit ooc sometimes oops bc they’re in different circumstances

“I’ll see you in a week.”

“That’s too long!”

“And yet, you have managed an entire school year apart.” Andrew rakes a hand through his hair as he leans back against pillows and watches a full-screened Neil Josten narrow his eyes and huff. They are many states away, in equally shitty dorm rooms of equally mediocre colleges, and they have been for some time now.

A year. A very long, long year.

“I don’t know why we’re best friends, Andrew Minyard.”

“Nor do I, you’re remarkably irritating,” Andrew lies. Neil  _ is _ irritating, in many ways. Only, Andrew knows that is also part of why they are friends. Another part is that Andrew himself is absolutely an asshole and no one else will put up with him.

But Neil? Neil simply smiles at the false jab and says, “ _ And yet, _ you’ve signed up to put up with me all summer.”

Andrew looks away from the smile and says, “You haven’t set foot in my car and I regret the decision already.”

Neil laughs a little, but the silence that follows tugs Andrew’s eyes back to the laptop screen.

It’s later in Neil’s time, and the terribly lit room in addition to the cheap webcam show little of the details of Neil Josten. His own computer screen lines the planes of his face in a ghostly sick light — Neil looks tired and sad, through an absent small smile as he stares into space.

If he were here, Andrew could distract him properly.

He could suggest a smoke break, which Andrew would spend silently pulling at a cigarette and acting like he wasn’t concerned with whether Neil was there or not, and Neil would watch with an irritating (but not sad, never sad) smile — a smile like he could see through Andrew’s carefully constructed ruse of carelessness. Because he could, every time.

Or Andrew could toss a chip at him and make him turn on a terrible fighting video game that Neil would inevitably end up swearing at when Andrew won for the third time in a row. The fourth or fifth time, Neil would toss his controller away and leave the room before stalking back in several minutes later to demand another rematch because he never lost gracefully.

Or, if all else failed…Andrew could quietly pull him close enough to tug Neil’s head down onto his shoulder, and they would sit like that, for a long time. Until Neil finally pulled away, and they both would avoid each other’s eyes for once, and wordlessly agree to never speak of it. Of that weird space they found on the rare occasions when they were pressed together, silent together, existing together, alone together.

But Andrew can do none of those things, because Neil is not here, and Andrew is not there. Abruptly, his chest insistently aches.

“Neil,” he has to settle for, to attempt to pull Neil from his reverie. To pull Andrew from this resulting… _ feeling _ .

“It  _ has  _ been so long, hasn’t it?” Neil turns glassy eyes on the screen. Andrew cannot properly make out their color in the half dark.

“I feel like it’s been — I — I miss —”

“This is very dramatic,” Andrew interrupts. “But I’ll be at your door in less than seven days. You can survive that long, can’t you?”

Neil laughs again. It is not as hollow, joined by the start of a smile. “I’ve survived worse.”

“Don’t go and get yourself murdered between finals, Josten, I won’t be there to pick up the pieces.”

Neil wraps his blankets around his shoulders and the budding smile across his face is blooming now. “I can’t guarantee anything, Minyard. I hear broke college students are prime mugging targets.”

“If someone wants to pick lint out of your wallet, that’s your issue. I just don’t want to deal with a body when I show up.”

“So, no repeats of high school, I’m hearing.”

Andrew lets the corner of his mouth twitch, because Neil’s tone is laced with humor. It was not a humorous incident at the time. But if Neil can laugh about stumbling upon a sliced open body in his father’s basement, if he can turn the resulting trial and weeks of huddled, horrified hiding at Andrew’s house into a joke, Andrew will play along with the coping mechanism.

“Not without me.”

Neil stutters a yawn as he says, “Okay, I’ll ignore any pools of blood I come across,” and Andrew raises an eyebrow.

“You should be asleep. Your math problems won’t do themselves tomorrow morning.”

“You know my schedule better than I do,” Neil mumbles, and his eyes are half closed at this point.

“Set your alarm, Josten.”

Neil hums tiredly and flaps his hand at the screen. When his eyes flutter completely shut, Andrew prompts him once, twice, and snorts as he takes a screencap of Neil’s mouth hanging slightly open.

“Goodnight, Neil,” he says, and Neil snores in response as Andrew closes the window to leave him to sleep.

* * *

Monday

* * *

Tuesday

* * *

Wednesday

* * *

Thursday

* * *

Friday

* * *

Saturday

* * *

When he’d first applied, the concept of college had been a means to an end for Andrew. A means to several ends — a job in the future, a way out, a place to be that wasn’t a false kind of family and a hopeless kind of house. And Andrew’s college was one of the few places that would take him, tattered past that he’d had.

It hadn’t really occurred to him what he’d be leaving behind in South Carolina when he’d taken the application, the meagre scholarships, the cheapest housing, the poor-paying jobs. He hadn’t realized…that he and Neil wouldn’t be attached at the hip. That Neil had to take what options were presented to him to claw his own way out.

They had said their goodbyes at the plane terminal, promised this wouldn’t make strangers of them. But they’d never been friends of a long distance variety before — as time wore on, communication stiffened and died. They’d exchanged a stilted text every month. Then every two months. Radio silence reigned.

Andrew didn’t know how to turn back on what had glued them together, now that they were apart.

The loneliness had built over the school quarters, a gnawing grayness enveloping Andrew, a robotic nature to his  _ eat, sleep, class _ routine. He rarely spoke to anyone that he was not required to, did his work, and felt remarkably empty.

High school hadn’t been like this. Even with his less-than-stellar home life. It had never been like this.

Maybe because he hadn’t often spent this long being entirely self-sufficient. Without the fire and smarts of another boy who’d fought against the cruel world beside him.

He’d stared at a pocket knife he’d been fiddling with halfway through a class lecture, halfway through the year, halfway through the sink into nothingness that Andrew had become. He’d been flicking it open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, and some time over the course of the mindless motion, the blade had found his palm, dug into the skin of his hand. He stared at the slice, at the blood welling up, at the mistake that he was not sure was entirely a mistake, and felt very sick suddenly.

He’d slipped out the class doors and puked in the toilet and called Neil for the first time in several months. Wouldn’t tell him what was wrong, but Neil’s voice in his ear made things seem a lot less gray. So on the tail end of the call, as Neil let slip that he, too, had stepped out of class when he’d seen Andrew’s name on the screen, that he didn’t care if he didn’t go back in, really, that it had been so long since they talked, Andrew had blurted, “Stay with me all summer.”

Neil had paused. “What?”

“I’ll pick you up.” Andrew licked dry lips and grimaced at the lingering taste in his mouth. “I’ll drive to get you. Let’s just…go.”

“Andrew, that’s so far to drive, I was just gonna stay up here with my friends Matt and Dan for the summer, you don’t have to —”

“Do you not want me to?” Andrew could not let vulnerability slip into his tone. He kept it as neutral as he could.

Neil saw through him.

He always did.

“Do  _ you _ want to?”

“Yes,” Andrew allowed, and Neil was silent for a while.

“Then let’s go.”

They called each other more, every few weeks, every week, every other day. The driving-to-get-Neil turned into an Event, a Road Trip Around The Country where they would probably kill each other over the months they’d spend on the road.

But Andrew wouldn’t have had it any other way.

He did not feel gray anymore.

* * *

Andrew cannot stop the jitter of his foot as he stands outside the heavy metal dorm door marked 207. He shakes out his hands and folds his arms and shifts his weight. Checks his phone again. Neil has seen the message. Where is —

Thumping footsteps pound closer, there’s the click of the doorknob, and there Neil Josten is, looking rumpled and breathless, and Andrew also cannot breathe for a moment. He feels his chest tighten and his stomach swoop and Neil is voicelessly kind of laughing, “ _ Andrew _ !”

Andrew can only loop his fingers into the neck of Neil’s obnoxiously sunshine yellow school hoodie — marked  _ GSU  _ for  _ Goldenfield State University _ and emblazoned with an equally obnoxious  _ actual _ sun because of course he would have school pride, the dumbass — and tug, fighting back the upward twist of his mouth to echo Neil’s wide sideways grin.

“Hello,” Andrew says, and Neil’s wild excitement gives way to a wryly amused smirk, and he repeats, “Hello,” in an exaggerated monotone.

Andrew pushes down another twitch, a bubble of a snort. “I brought my knives. I hadn’t planned on you being the body, but it can be arranged.”

Neil’s fingers twist around his wrist in a tight hold — the closest to a hug they will come, they have never been huggers — and his smile is entirely, endearingly fond now. “Losing your road trip partner so early? When you drove all this way? Thought you wouldn’t give in on day one, but I guess I was wrong.”

“Are you trying to suggest my pride is a greater motivator than my need to commit murder, Josten?”

Neil’s laugh soothes something deep in Andrew’s chest that he hadn’t been aware was aching until now, and if Andrew was anyone else, he thinks he’d be powerless in joining in. As it is, even he is not strong enough to tear his eyes from Neil’s face, from drinking in the slight dimple on the right side, the crinkles by his eyes, the warped skin by his left cheekbone from a childhood riddled with “accidents.”

The moment is very warm, but they both cannot stop staring, and the too-intense study of each other turns the air strange.

“I packed my stuff into storage, come in, come in, I just have to make sure I have everything in my bag and my room is clean —” Neil kicks aside boxes piled by the door, gathers another few smaller ones in his arms as he bumps the door open further with a hip for Andrew to pass. “Roommate stuff, sorry. Oh god, those finals were hell, if my English professor doesn’t pass me, I’m gonna have to come back early to strangle him, you know?”

The chatter is not a standard Neil staple, but Andrew can feel the same nervous current. It’s been so long. Are they the same?

Is this okay?

Neil heads for a door down the hall, still babbling. The more he speaks, the tighter his shoulders look. “This week has seriously kicked my ass, I don’t know if I really slept since Sunday night, I’m —”

“It’s over,” Andrew says. “You’re done.”

Neil stops in his doorway. Even in the sweatshirt, Andrew can watch as his back flexes, finally slumps. “Yeah.”

He turns to smile a small smile at Andrew — an acknowledgement of the tension, gratitude for breaking it — and grabs a duffle bag by his bedroom door, looking around the space.

Andrew drifts to do the same. The room is bare, unadorned, the college-issue bed stripped to the mattress. There is no Neil in this room.

Even if his room in South Carolina had been bland under the strict eye of his parents, there had still been a whisper of Neil here and there. A secret lacrosse poster taped to the inside of his closet. A furtively carved “NAJ” and “AJM” in the corner wall underneath the bed. The smell of Neil’s sheets when they lounged on top of them and traded secrets and chocolate peanuts and Andrew’s beat up Gameboy — a scent that was all Neil, Neil, Neil.

“Bye,” Neil murmurs, to himself. To the room. He flicks off the light and locks the door and stares at the single key in his hand and Andrew feels a stab of something like his knives in his ribs, and he turns to slowly nudge more boxes towards the front door with his own booted foot.

Ah, Neil has put down roots here.

Without him.

“We should go,” Andrew says.

He needs a cigarette.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter cw: mentions of Andrew and Neil’s pasts, mentions of self harm, mentions of violence, mental spiraling  
> I'm 23 today, so have another chapter in celebration!  
> [Roadtrip playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3thUQNBZz9ZEqhaiN2UzBG?si=L4dfLTwhR4aL6wINoLv0ow), & some songs definitely playin during this chapter 😉 [Trouble](https://open.spotify.com/track/3UkU7W1CNZJlYMh1Wn4FKh?si=4nTGRPlCQGSHFenaDmf-mA) & [Bones](https://open.spotify.com/track/1pfgsjmxVZhoZpeDx6POKv?si=XIWC73UkQdCUMAAZFsOAnQ)

Andrew’s life had been filled with fucked-up foster families for as long as he could remember, early years spent pinging between faceless adults who shouldn’t have hurt him but did, every time. So Andrew lived as impassively as he could, and struck out when he had no other choice, breaking up the scenery behind juvie bars.

Discovering an equally fucked-up blood brother and cousin across the country hadn’t done much but serve as an official modification of his last name. Aaron was broken and jaded from his own abuse and his mother’s death under the influence behind the wheel of a car she shouldn’t have been driving.

He hadn’t wanted to meet Andrew.

Their cousin, Nicholas Hemmick, had begged them both, but neither would budge. All Andrew had heard was that his brother didn’t want him, and he knew better by now than to chase after “family.”

Cass Spear was one of the only constants. But so was her son, the patchwork years of his looming presence staining Andrew’s life whenever Drake was present. It was Cass’s house that had given him Neil, down the street, something that made the house more like a home.

Andrew never let Neil visit when Drake was there.

As soon as he flew off for college, Andrew made sure no Spear was a constant. At the airline gate with his heart in his throat, he blocked Drake’s number and deleted Cass’s texts. They didn’t even know the college he’d gone to — he’d made sure of that.

Andrew never told Neil everything, but Neil wasn’t blind, and he knew Andrew too well besides. He would press against Andrew’s side when Andrew sat too close to be smart and wait for permission to run whisper-light, sorry fingers over Andrew’s bandage-bulky forearms, hidden by his armbands. But sometimes, Andrew would take off the armbands, because he was never good at taking care of himself, and Neil would quietly bandage them for him.

Neil didn’t tell Andrew everything either, but Andrew surmised enough. Neil wasn’t Neil at home, but hearing his birth name was accompanied with a flinch of dark eyes. Andrew never called him what Neil’s mother and father did. His father’s “business” was something on the wrong side of shady — bringing him thankfully away from the house, most of the time, changing the last name they used around town to Josten, for a thin veneer of cover — and his mother was whip-quick to snap and yell and strike, probably because her husband was ten times worse.

Neil’s scars were not self-inflicted. When Andrew’s house was safe, Neil had shown up at his window at 3 AM before, panting jaggedly with forming bruises, bleeding cuts, festering burns.

Andrew knew more of Neil’s body through its careful, methodical ruin than he’d like.

Over the years, he hated even more that he couldn’t get the image of Neil’s skin out of his head.

* * *

Andrew’s car is nice. Outside of college, it is one of the few things he’s spent his life savings on, because he likes cars. And because he has spent too much of his time never allowed what he wants.

He wants to just  _ drive _ .

Neil doesn’t know shit about cars. It is very gratifying to watch his step falter and his eyebrows climb up his forehead when Andrew clicks the key and the headlights flash, a single sophisticate in a parking lot of college clunkers.

“We’re going on this road trip in  _ that _ ?”

“I’m not going in something that will break down ten minutes into the trip.” He opens the door and leans on the roof as he watches Neil approach the passenger side with wariness, trail careful fingertips across the glossy paint job. It is a new bit of Andrew that Neil is not familiar with, either.

Andrew swings behind the wheel and turns the key. The engine purrs, the radio springs to life with heavy bass, the sun is shining, and Neil is exhaling as he slides into the seat beside Andrew. Andrew revs the engine and slides the windows down, whips out of the parking lot.

There’s nothing but road before them as the wind catches at Neil’s hair. He laughs, and Andrew feels something bright in his chest, something to almost eclipse that ache from earlier, because they’re here, together again.

* * *

Neil’s hand trails out the window to catch at the air current, and his smile is unbearably wide. “Where are we even going?” he finally shouts, above the whoosh of the wind and a man crooning through the speakers about trouble, turned up.

“Who knows,” says Andrew, and he feels free, for the first time in…maybe ever, and the flash of Neil’s blue eyes says he knows, he’s in the same boat, and he leans forward to turn up the music even louder.

Hours are minutes, days are blinks of time. Andrew doesn’t know how he’s never thought of this until now — just taking a car and  _ going _ , with Neil, because neither of them need a home. They’ve always found it more in each other than anything else.

It’s summer and they’re untethered by classes, by schooltime jobs, by anyone or anything. They just have this car, their bags of barely-anything belongings, and what savings they’ve gathered for this trip. The scenery rolls from dusty, monochrome, tan desert broken by only a scrubgrass tumbleweed, to sunburned, golden farm fields, to the green grass of cattle grazing land, to a blip of multicolored, bright civilization, and back again. They find motels along the way, but sometimes they just pull over off the road and curl up in the seats, even if it gives them horrible backaches by the next morning — Neil in the back seat balled up like a cat, Andrew in the front, seat tilted all the way back. Drive-through sugar-blended caffeine, the high of Neil yelling along to songs they used to share through MP3 earbuds, and probably not enough in terms of actual sustenance get them through the first few weeks. Everything is so much more than fine and Andrew doesn’t know why he ever worried.

They stop in dingy little small town restaurants and linger in narrow gas station aisles, lit by yellow-tinted flickering bulbs where they throw junk food at each other across the top of the shelves and ignore the tired glares of the cashiers.

Andrew is forced into a black tank top because even in the A/C-filled cabin, it’s too hot. As a result, he burns in the sun through the car windows, and glares when Neil laughs because  _ he’s _ only freckled further, even though he’s very distractingly fucking stripped off his entire shirt to lounge in only his very stupid jean shorts. Andrew really hates them, and he tells Neil so, so Neil steals his sunglasses and makes fun of Andrew’s driving posture, and shuts up when Andrew says that he’s welcome to try driving this expensive car if he’s so fucking inclined.

Neil is not inclined to drive Andrew’s prized possession unless Andrew needs him to, but he  _ is _ inclined to help when Andrew scrubs a hand over his head and complains that his hair is too long, and it’s been too long since he had a haircut. Neil produces a clipper from his bag when Andrew pulls over, and with trepidation, Andrew sits in the passenger seat and bows his head over the edge of the road, and Neil runs the buzzing appliance up the back and sides of his head. Blond hair scatters to the ground and the wind as Neil tilts his head back up with a hand to Andrew’s chin, and studies his job carefully. Andrew focuses on spitting out the remnants of his haircut and  _ not _ on Neil’s fingers, still caressing his face. Nor can he look at the vast expanse of skin that has come from Neil traveling half-naked.

“Hang on. Can I do something? Hold still.” Neil’s eyes are alight with something like mischief, and Andrew narrows his own, but does not move and does not deny permission as Neil steadies Andrew — his hand cupping the side of Andrew’s head now, thumb sweeping across his cheek and Andrew  _ isn’t _ thinking about it — and once again raises the clippers. He runs them carefully in a line along the side of Andrew’s head, then again. He catches Andrew’s gaze, raises his eyebrows, grins, and taps the blades to Andrew’s own eyebrow.

“What,” Andrew says, not shifting away even though he wants to.

“Look, look. I’ve seen people around campus doing that. See?”

Andrew skeptically flicks down the visor mirror to regard himself. Neil’s haircutting skills leave a bit to be desired, it is not entirely even everywhere, but close enough. Andrew runs his fingers along the two slim lines cut deeper running along one temple, and the cut into his eyebrow.

“I think it makes you look cool,” says Neil.

“Fine,” he says, and Neil smiles, and Andrew huffs as he slides back into the driver’s seat, as Neil packs back up and pulls his seatbelt back on. They’re back on the road in a few moments.

Andrew can still feel Neil’s thumb on his cheek.

* * *

He doesn’t know when Neil started actually paying attention to his often-forgotten phone, because at some point in warm afternoon glow, he glances over to Neil absently smiling down at it and typing, and it buzzes back at him in his hands. And it continues, for minutes, an hour, time no longer a hummingbird’s wing, but stretching long like taffy. Neil doesn’t look up. Andrew catches sight of Instagram photos he’s flipping through, of a man and woman and Neil, there, in the middle of them, their arms slung around him, grinning wide and laughing.

Warmth sours, and the song playing seems to deaden. Andrew fixes his eyes back on pockmarked pavement of a only-sometimes inhabited highway. His mouth tastes bitter, because he does not want to feel this way. He doesn’t wish Neil a lonely existence. It is just a text. To somebody worth smiling over.

It is not a reason to think that if he tried to prod at the air between them, there might be the resistance of a wall there.

It is not a reason to feel suddenly, utterly, completely alone.

* * *

The sun has definitely dipped a good deal when Neil’s head starts sagging against the edge of the door, his eyelids drooping. Andrew dials down the music and watches Neil’s profile as it slackens. He returns his gaze to the road, but cannot stop it from drifting back when Neil sleepily shifts against the seatbelt to curl into himself and face Andrew almost fully. Red hair is tousled softly by the still half-open window, and his scarred cheek is squished into the seat, and he looks very young in how lax he is, for once.

He’s asleep, so finally Andrew allows himself to acknowledge the unsaid thing that Neil has been trying to voice for the both of them for so much of this time apart. He’s fucking missed him. More than Neil could ever know, Andrew’s missed him. And fuck, here Neil is, with a new home that is not Andrew and is instead a pair he planned to spend the summer with, with friendships he’s built with people Andrew doesn’t know, with a place to go back to that he will miss.

And Andrew can’t say a word about that, that is not what this trip is supposed to be. He is not allowed to let this spill over into something vicious spoken aloud.

So he stays quiet through Neil’s nap, through Neil’s slow awakening, through the momentary eye contact of Andrew getting caught watching his eyelids flutter open, through the tired smile and sleepy stretching and the resettling as Neil looks around the darkening landscape of almost-town outskirts passing them by.

“Should we stop soon? Find dinner and a place to sleep?”

Andrew dips his head and shrugs a shoulder, which Neil correctly takes to mean,  _ find it then _ .

It barely takes Neil any time before he’s turning his phone screen to where Andrew can glance over a list of restaurants nearby. He’s much better at technology than when they parted, Andrew notes. Perhaps the influence of new people nagging him into finally owning a smartphone, maybe the same people who badgered him into joining Instagram when Neil, like Andrew, had spent all his life allergic to social media platforms.

Andrew shrugs again at the food options because he doesn’t care, so Neil silently selects, and tosses his phone onto the dash where it robotically directs Andrew onward.

They don’t speak through their dinner of burgers — though Neil quirks an eyebrow when Andrew waves away a dessert menu — and remain reticent on the drive to the cheapest nearby motel. The front desk receptionist is only too happy to be sullenly short when Andrew tosses a credit card and ID at him and holds up two fingers.

The walls of their room are an unintentionally off-white and when the lamp is switched on, there’s a insistent, low buzzing that won’t stop, but there are two neatly made beds and a small TV that Neil idly flicks on after depositing his duffle on one of the nightstands.

Andrew goes to try and shower away tight muscles from the drive. He presses his forehead to the tile when his shoulders won’t unlock and thinks of a barely touched box of cigarettes tucked into his bag. If too-hot steam won’t clear his head, maybe a moment to breathe in smoke alone will.

He feels Neil’s eyes follow him as he pads towards the door, digging out a pack and his lighter from his backpack. He itches, underneath his skin, feels jumbled and wrong. He thinks for a moment just before the door swings shut behind him that Neil might get up and follow him.

He doesn’t know if he’s disappointed when it clicks closed and there is no further movement. He came out here to be alone, didn’t he? The cigarettes and cooling night air only brush the surface of the inexplicable scramble that he is right now. It might be another hour before he finishes and tosses the last stub of filter away, wrapping his fingers tight enough around the metal motel railing that a sharp edge bites at his skin. There is nothing left in the crumbled pack of cardboard, and he thinks at this rate, he might as well have never taken the shower at all. He feels disgusting.

Neil’s nose doesn’t wrinkle when Andrew lets himself back into their room, though he must smell like a smokestack. Neil just looks at him, with a faux mildness that Andrew doesn’t believe for a second — Neil Josten has never been mild a day in his life. But he looks back at the television when Andrew, again, doesn’t strike up any kind of conversation, and breaks the silence himself.

“Do you remember?”

Lacrosse teams are going head-to-head onscreen, and one of them is wearing a nostalgic shade of blue. The Robins. It transports Andrew to a squashy couch in a dim basement TV room.

A ball smashed into a net, crowds screaming loud enough to deafen even through the screen, the man on the poster hidden in Neil’s closet yanking off his helmet to celebrate his winning goal — and Neil yelling beside Andrew too, on his feet, arms raised in celebration. Andrew had allowed Neil to grab and shake at his shoulder, because a fierce kind of victory had been coursing through him, too.

“Will you tell me? What’s going on?”

Neil has turned from where he’s propped against his pillows. Andrew hates him.

“What about the game we used to play? Will you trade me for a secret?”

It had been a childish game, when they’d first met. Had barely skimmed the depths of either of their pasts at the time — Neil never trusted easily, Andrew even less so. They’d mostly shared fluff, meaningless truths at the time.

“You won’t like my secrets. I’m all out of nice ones now.”

Andrew’s voice scratches in a raw throat. He hadn’t bid himself to speak. He stares at the ceiling and feels like he might shake apart, though he is lying on his own bed, perfectly still.

“Me too,” says Neil. Then, in his own suddenly laid bare voice, “I realized at college — I don’t know how to be normal.”

Andrew traces popcorn texture with his eyes.

“I’ve been trying to be normal there, and just play along with all of the people I met. But then I would just…say something wrong, do something strange.”

“And yet, friends abound.”

Neil is quiet for so long that Andrew has to look. His brow is furrowed and he, too, is staring at the ceiling.

“Are you talking about Matt and Dan?” His eyes turn to Andrew’s, and they are filled with dawning, disturbing understanding. “Is that what’s wrong?”

During their early years, Andrew has always been utterly transparent to Neil in a way he’s never been to anyone else. Neil knows him, can read a twitch in his fingers, a shift in his shoulders. It’s great ammunition to cut right to the quick, generally.

“Shut up.”

“It’s just because of proximity, you know? They barely know anything about me.” Neil crawls to the edge of his bed, suddenly fiercely intent. “Andrew.”

_ Liar. _

Andrew stands back up and re-pockets his room key.

“Where are you going?” He does not expect the note of slight desperation that works its way into Neil’s voice. Neil seems to know this line is being toed, perhaps even crossed.

Andrew cannot listen to him.

“I am going to buy more cigarettes.”

“Can I come with you? Pl —” Neil stops.

Did he forget? Did he get back into the habit while he was away, of  _ pleading _ ?

“ _ Andrew. _ ”

Andrew clenches his jaw and lets his fingers linger on the door handle, not turning. He’s always thought he liked Neil’s unique ability to crack him open and pull everything out without a word from Andrew’s lips.

It is more than  _ Matt _ and  _ Dan _ now, though, bigger than that, larger than them. Neil barrels on, blind for once. “If you need to leave for a while…I get it. But they’re  _ friends _ . You’re my  _ best _ friend. You always will be.”

The lights of the city outside blur in Andrew’s vision as he lets the door slam shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, you can find that beautiful art from noah embedded in this chapter [here](https://n0ahdraws.tumblr.com/post/628076645875597312/)!!  
> see y'all in another few days ;)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: scar worship, mentions of past sexual assault, mental spiraling and thoughts of self-harm, non-explicit sexual content  
> DEMISEXUAL NEIL AND DEMIROMANTIC ANDREW RIGHTS TALK 2 ME ABOUT THIS HEADCANON ANY DAY

Andrew Minyard has been a little bit in love with Neil Josten for a long, long time, he thinks.

He doesn’t know why unmarked skin is considered perfect, when it is the spiderweb flecks of freckles, the dip and curve of scarred marks of survival that makes Neil’s skin beautiful to him. 

He has wanted to kiss every spot, run his lips along each gash of tissue and pucker of flesh. He thinks that though he breaks much of what he touches, he could touch Neil and Neil’s skin will only bend to him, won’t shatter.

Andrew’s hands are calloused from years of wearing them down, working away his demons with sweat, but Neil’s coping mechanism is running — his palms are soft. Andrew thinks that if he allowed Neil to touch him, those fingers might feel like velvet. And maybe Andrew wouldn’t crack further, either.

He’s thought about men since he was first piecing together jagged bits of his sexuality. He has spent some odd years carefully choosing partners that are willing to stay at arms’ distance — but it has only ever been about sex. He does not find himself fantasizing about pressing his mouth to another man’s skin to comfort, to care for, to  _ worship _ .

Yet he would. For Neil. For Neil, he  _ wants to _ .

It does not matter — Neil is off limits. Neil is uninterested. In the subliminal space of drifting dreams, before he even considered the very idea that he was attracted to his best friend, Andrew carefully separated this want from reality. Neil has never shown a true interest in a single person in all their years — he’s rebuffed phone numbers, come-ons, bodies brushing against him. Sometimes through pure, blissful unawareness, sometimes through outright fiery refusal, but with clear disregard for any kind of sexual or romantic relationship each and every time.

So Andrew taught himself not to want. Andrew is fully content — for once in his life,  _ content _ — in their friendship.

He did not think that he would form such an ugly growth of jealousy in his core at the very thought of that friendship threatened. It is so very stupid.  _ He _ is stupid. He doesn’t know why he’s allowed himself to reach this point at all.

Despising himself is nothing new, however, and this angry, bitter creature crawling up his ribs seems to be part of him now. A therapist from long ago that he allows himself to almost miss occasionally would probably point out that it might just be borne of a sad loneliness that pushes everything away rather than pulls.

What else does he have but Neil, after all? Neil is everything.

Well,  _ that _ is very unhealthy. Another point for self-hatred.

The Therapist whispers that he’s had others. That if he tried, maybe he could keep them. Across the country — a broken mirror image twin, a loud, smiling, crying cousin. At college — a too-tall lacrosse player with arrogance and fear to match who has hidden behind Andrew because of his own non-blood brother, a girl with a secret behind her smile and a force behind her fists who he hasn’t texted back.

Neil is allowed to have other friends. Andrew could have other friends, too.

It is really too bad that this thought that  _ should _ scrub away this ugly, dark mess in his chest doesn’t do even a bit of deep cleaning. Because he doesn’t have other friends. He’s pushed them all away and they are all gone now. He continues to resent it, and resent himself, and battle the creeping thoughts of punishing himself for this.

He buys the cigarettes and jams them deep into his pocket and doesn’t touch them.

When he returns, the lights are off. He thinks he hears Neil shift as he pulls off his jeans and slides into bed, but he doesn’t say anything, and Andrew doesn’t either.

He wonders if he has ruined it all, now.

He wants something tangible, and he can’t,  _ won’t _ , ask Neil for it. A more clearly defined friendship or something else — something to ground himself.

He rolls so his back is to Neil and thinks maybe he will indulge himself — punish himself — with an actual destination for this trip at long last.

* * *

The next morning, Neil pokes his head into the car and eyes Andrew’s phone sitting on the dashboard. Siri instructs to turn right out of the parking lot, and Neil looks over at Andrew as he slips into his seat, then looks away. Like Neil is a guilty, silent stray cat.

He doesn’t ask immediately, not when Andrew pulls up the parking brake, not when they merge into sleepy traffic, not when the first few hours of waking up fade to them coming to terms with the tense silence.

Finally, Andrew pulls into a gas station and turns off the engine, and Neil explodes.

“Listen, I’m sorry about last night, but I can’t  _ fix this _ if you won’t  _ tell me about it _ , Andrew. If it wasn’t what I thought it was, what is it?”

Andrew throws him a glance and shuts the door to pump gas. It is a mistake, he thinks, as soon as he does it. He doesn’t have to meet Neil’s blazing gaze to know.

“You know, one thing that Matt does is he makes me  _ talk about what I’m feeling _ ,” Neil spits when Andrew gets back into the car, clicks the seatbelt back into place, stares out the windshield. “I fucking  _ hate it _ , but it’s crazy how talking about shit actually  _ helps _ sometimes? I need you to tell me what’s going on!”

“Turn left,” says Siri.

“ _ Where are we going, Andrew? _ ” Neil snarls.

“Back.”

Neil blinks and grabs for the phone, to look at the destination himself. Maybe thinking back to his college, or perhaps to Andrew’s, which had been a hazy possibility at some point, but no.

“H-home?” Neil has gone white under freckles, his knuckles in sharp relief as Andrew’s phone groans in his grip. “You’re taking us home?”

“Not home. I’m not setting foot back in that house.”

A punishment, an indulgence. To be back in the town of his worst nightmares and the best years of his life. To step back into memories.

“Another motel,” Neil surmises weakly and correctly, and tosses the phone back at the windshield. Andrew still doesn’t look at him, but out of the corner of his eye, he still sees that Neil is trembling a little when he sits back and turns away to stare out the window in silence once more.

* * *

Returning is not an exciting prospect for Neil, it is clear, as they creep closer and closer to their childhood hometown and Neil grows tenser and tenser.

_ WELCOME TO COLUMBIA, _ proclaims a mildewed sign on the side of the road as they speed past, and Neil makes a sound — a sharp intake of breath, a pained almost whimper.

Andrew looks at him but Neil’s gaze is fixed ahead, fingers digging into his knees, drawn up to his chest. Andrew wonders if this is punishment more for himself, or for Neil.

“Call ahead,” he says, instead of some kind of apology, reaching to toss his phone back at Neil. “The hotel near the highway. We’re going out first.”

Neil fumbles and catches the phone, calls mechanically to ask for a room for two, hangs up and sits for another moment. “Going out?” he croaks.

“Eden’s.”

Neil does not look any calmer as he nods, his fingers not shaking any less as he deposits Andrew’s phone into his lap. He doesn’t know Eden’s like Andrew does.

* * *

Eden’s Twilight was one of Andrew’s havens when he was younger: a job, a place away. It provided him a spot in the back where he could wipe down dishes in silent solitude, a supply of free alcohol, occasionally, a lesson on bartending. And even a space to explore what he hadn’t thought he’d wanted — men.

The bartender who spoke to him most, Roland, had made no secret of his flirtation with male customers, and when Andrew had indicated interest, it hadn’t taken long for their…arrangement to occur.

Now, Andrew thinks that, since he’s running down the list, if steam and smoke won’t cut through the fog of his brain, maybe sex will.

He has clothes in his bag that will do for the club, but Neil is stuck in his scruffy gray T-shirt and jeans. Neil doesn’t seem to care though, too focused on picking another hole in the knees as he stares out the window at the wildly dressed line waiting to get in.

“Why are we here?” he asks finally, and Andrew tosses his own black jean jacket at Neil to salvage his outfit.

_ I am tired of nonsensically feeling alone with you, _ he doesn’t say.  _ I want to pretend I have friends too. I want to feel like I have someone to go back to, if it’s not you. _ “I was bored,” he says instead.

Neil’s eyebrows furrow as he slowly pulls on the jacket and follows Andrew as the bouncers smile and part to let them into the dark space.

* * *

Andrew likes the anonymity of the flashing lights being the barest illumination, likes knowing all the exits and all the staff, even after over a year. He likes that he can slide onto a stool at the bar, meet Roland’s glance, and watch his face immediately brighten.

“You’re home!”

“In town for a bit,” Andrew corrects, out of the corner of his eye, catches Neil awkwardly hovering by his shoulder before he, too, clambers onto a stool (clumsily) and stares at Roland (guardedly), his shoulders scrunched up around his ears (apprehensively).

“Oh, who’s this?” Roland turns an interested smile on Neil, who shrinks further.

“Neil,” Neil says, and he has never sounded so far out of his element than now, nervous and irritated and unsure.

Roland looks abruptly  _ very _ eager. “What a coincidence, I feel like I’ve heard that name before.”

“Roland,” Andrew warns, and Roland smirks at him before sliding a full glass across the bar.

“Neil, what’s your drink?”

“Water,” Neil says, and glares when Andrew snorts. “Fine, soda.”

“Oh, c’mon, give me a  _ challenge _ .” Roland rolls his eyes but cracks open a cola can.

Neil takes it to nurse and fails to inconspicuously flick a glance between the two of them.

“So, how’s college?” Roland asks as he wipes down a glass, and Andrew sighs. They are not ones for small talk.

“I need more alcohol before you try to get me to talk about school.”

“Aw, no hot professors to write home about?”

Andrew tips back his drink and taps the empty bar in front of him, Roland laughs, and next to Andrew, Neil shrinks further.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Neil asks, and Roland points it out to him, tucked further into the club along the back wall. Neil slips away with one last unsure look, and Roland’s eyes fall to Andrew’s, and his smile is curling knowingly now.

“You didn’t leave and forget us all, did you?”

“Let’s go,” Andrew says roughly, and Roland turns to raise a hand to the other man tending the bar.

The back halls of Eden’s are as cramped as ever, but the floors are almost clean and the supply room door must have finally been oiled enough not to squeak as they close it behind them. Andrew lets his eyes glide over an unfamiliar shelf of fancy bottles, another stack of boxes of nicer bar glasses than they used to have, a new coat of dark paint that isn’t flaking from the wall.

“So, did you finally hit that? Or are you still waiting to pop the question?” Roland’s grin is shit-eating, and curiously infuriating. Andrew is usually willing to put up with his teasing, but tonight, it grates an angry flare in his chest.

“Shut the fuck up,” Andrew says tonelessly, and sinks to his knees for a familiar unbuckle, unsnap, unzip, willing his own mind to go blank and not think of Neil’s last glance back. He cannot worry if Neil is still collecting himself in the restroom, if he found the bar empty and pushed back outside to breathe, if he is still as anxious as he was when their tires hit Columbia soil. But most of all, he cannot even think about entertaining the idea of looking up and seeing red curls spilling across blue eyes looking down at him, the idea that the hand tapping against the wall like it wants to twist into his hair might be freckled and slender — he cannot consider if maybe he’d want that hand in his hair —

“ _ Oh fuck. _ ”

Andrew recoils. Roland’s body impacting the wall makes a too-loud noise as he flinches back, and Andrew turns to meet the very eyes he shouldn’t have been picturing. Neil is staring like Andrew is some kind of ghost, like he hadn’t realized what he’d been inviting by leaving, like he had never thought that by trailing after them, maybe he’d witness this…

“Fuck,” Neil says again, and wheels around and is gone, and Andrew chases after him.

“ _ Neil. _ ”

Neil stops short at the employees only door leading back out to the bar, catches Andrew off guard, too close — knocking into him, Andrew steadies himself with Neil’s wrist in his grasp.

“You never told me.”

“What,” Andrew says.

“You never said anything. About…about him, or…or liking anyone, or…you never told me any of it.”

“ _ What _ ,” Andrew says again, because is this really the conversation they’re having?

“We’re best friends and you can’t even tell me —”

“That I’m gay? You’re mad I never came out to you? It never meant shit to me, none of that does,” Andrew says, feeling very cold. “But you can’t even tell me that you’re replacing me? You can’t say anything about that to me, can you?”

Neil stares at him, and stares, and twists his wrist from Andrew’s hand. The door slams behind him.

Andrew stands there for probably too long. Neil does not open the door again to ask for some kind of apology for whatever that was, or to apologize himself, or to start up a shouting match. Roland does not come looking for him, for a continuation, for an explanation, for even a sympathetic look.

Andrew is alone.

* * *

Andrew is alone behind the bar, in the crowd, in the hallway, in the bathroom where he washes his hands, washes his mouth, washes his face, and looks up into a dirty bathroom mirror to stare at himself like Neil stared at him. Somewhere along the way, his silence meant to prevent this became its catalyst.

Sudden clarity sends him stumbling back to press his back to the wall, to lean back and stare up at the ceiling and breathe. (The Therapist would be proud that he has grown to know himself so well. And sad. Because he has grown to know this part of himself so well.)

He’s over his anger, but — ah. Ah, that’s a different kind of self-destructive, isn’t it?

Andrew is still alone when he weaves his way right back out of the club, he is alone walking through the street, he is alone by the car because Neil is not standing next to it. He is alone driving for the hotel and he is alone when they give him the key for the room under Josten, when he climbs the stairs and rounds the corner and lifts the card to the doorknob where it flashes green.

The bathroom is empty but the light is on, spilling through the room and onto the bed — the one bed, because of course, Neil did not have the presence of mind to ask for two when he was on that phone in the car to Columbia — and across the small lump under the covers.

Andrew flicks off the light. He pulls off his shirt. And slowly, quietly, he gets into the bed.

Neil does not move.

Andrew rolls over to face the back presented to him — yellow sweatshirt and hood pulled up, hunched inwards. Carefully, Andrew reaches to capture a bit of fabric between his fingers, and gently, cautiously, he tugs. Once, twice, lightly.

Neil does not move.

He does not yank away, he does not turn in to whisper anything to Andrew in the dark. He just lies there, still curled in on himself, awake and silent and still, and Andrew deserves every moment of feeling how very alone he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh the discord fam groupchat name that sprang from the nonsensical crack i cut from this chapter,,,,,


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: mentions of Andrew’s past traumas  
> fuck it have this a day early  
> y'all that have been reading along while I post - i'm sorry it took so long but you made it through all that angst for this softness!!! good job!!!  
> also i'm weak for neil only very rarely dropping “drew”  
> thanks to eli for editin in timestamps for the texts ily again my darlin

Andrew stiffens as consciousness trickles in. There is someone next to him, a foot draped across his ankle, a shoulder pressed to his.

 _It’s Neil, it’s Neil, it’s Neil._ His blood still hums unpleasantly but he turns his head, buried in the hotel pillow, to look.

The soft light peeking through not-quite-shut curtains kisses his profile with sun, tracing the sharp jut of his jaw, the smooth curve of his nose, the soft part of his mouth. Andrew thinks, in half-sleep, that he would like to chase the sunbeam up Neil’s throat with his own lips.

When Neil shifts, his forehead creases, his mouth twitches down, and Andrew barely has time to lessen the intensity of his gaze before Neil is looking back at him.

He is as familiar with Neil’s face as his own, but the guarded mask that slides over Neil’s features is new. And the absence of his warmth next to Andrew is new, too, as Neil rolls out of bed to head for the bathroom, leaving Andrew, once more, alone.

* * *

“Let’s go back.”

Andrew looks up from the complimentary bowl of dye-bleeding fruit loops to stare.

Neil scoops his spoon through his lumpy oatmeal and doesn’t meet Andrew’s gaze, letting the goop fall back into his bowl. “I think we’ve travelled enough, haven’t we?”

“It was supposed to be all summer,” Andrew says.

“I don’t want to be here.” Neil looks up now, steely-eyed. “I can’t be in this town anymore.”

“We don’t have to stay here,” says Andrew. “We can drive anywhere.”

“We can drive back to drop me off,” Neil says.

“Okay,” says Andrew.

* * *

When they spent nearly all their time in each other’s rooms, Andrew never had to tell Neil to stay away when he needed space. Neil would look and know, and sit on the ground at the foot of Andrew’s bed and carefully, quietly scratch out homework answers and let Andrew curl on his pillow and stare into space and figure out how to speak again. And when he finally croaked that he wanted ice cream, Neil would put aside the pencil and paper and workbook and produce a five dollar bill that might have been what little his mother remembered to give him last week, and Andrew would glare at it, shake his head, and steal Cass’s car keys and tell her that he needed money for food.

She would smile and give him a twenty, and Neil would gamely go with him to scrounge up a tub of sprinkle-filled ice cream that he would pick at from his spot on the ground, and Andrew would consume in very nearly one sitting.

And if, hours later, Andrew would rasp, “Neil,” Neil would look up and know that he could pick up his homework and sit close enough that Andrew could tuck his forehead against Neil’s shoulder as he spooned sugar cold enough to numb his teeth into his mouth.

When Neil needed space — those times were few and far between, with Andrew — he would retreat, sometimes to sit on the side of his bathtub behind a closed door, sometimes with crossed legs on top of the laundry machine tucked into a dark corner, sometimes to wedge himself into the crook of a tall tree in his backyard, high above the ground. And then, after a while, maybe he would call Andrew, and Andrew would come find him, and stand in front of him and return his stare. Until they were both grounded again.

Things were simpler, when the language they spoke was almost entirely silence, and the thoughts they shared were so readable. No one else had an in on their conversations, no one interfered, and there was no censure or anger in their talks, just understanding.

His silence towards Neil, Neil’s towards him now — it’s not communication anymore, it’s shutting the other out. They aren’t speaking at all.

Andrew wonders if it is he or if it is Neil whose tongue forgot the words.

* * *

They are well and truly fighting, Andrew thinks. Neil’s wordlessness feels like its own form of violence, now.

Neil turns on the radio after an hour of it.

Andrew lets him.

Neil flicks it back off after three songs.

Andrew flexes his hands on the steering wheel and says nothing.

The day drags on.

The sun moves in the sky like slow molasses, streaking white, then yellow, then pink and red and golden clouds across the horizon, and then it is gone. Stars spark up, announcing that Andrew should stop driving soon, probably, that maybe they should plan a pause, but there is nothing for miles and his head is pounding and he couldn’t sleep right now even if he wanted to.

Neil has his head cradled in his palm, turned away, has perhaps been drifting because it’s getting later and later, when it happens.

They both possibly hit the roof when the enormous _bang_ rocks the car, and the uneven bumping steers Andrew to the side of the road, adrenaline high.

Neil is plastered to his seat, clutching the side of it, the other hand wrapped around the door handle, both grips tight enough to whiten knuckles.

“Tire busted,” Andrew says.

“Not a gunshot,” Neil says, quietly, weakly.

“No,” says Andrew, and gets out to examine the damage.

The tire is well and truly fucked, and further so by the fact that he knows his car carries no spare.

“Are we stuck?”

Neil leans against the bumper, bare arms wrapped around himself and shivering. He blinks at Andrew’s bright phone flashlight.

“We have to call to get a tow.” Andrew clicks on his phone and pauses, glaring. Of course. “Do you have reception?”

“No,” sighs Neil, slumping against the car. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” Andrew agrees, standing up to kick the pathetically flat rubber and swear again, louder.

“We should sleep anyway,” Neil says, crawling back into the car.

Andrew’s nerves are still jangling. He thinks _fuck it_ and hops up onto the cooling hood, then clambers onto the roof.

“Jesus,” he hears from inside the car, then the door is opening and Neil is sticking his head out to stare — maybe to glare, actually, and yeah, Andrew probably deserves that.

“What are you doing?”

“Can’t sleep.”

“You didn’t even try.”

“I’m not going to.”

Neil huffs and shoves the door fully open with a foot, then climbs up the front tire, the hood, and drops down next to Andrew on top of the car.

He follows Andrew’s gaze up to constellations that Andrew can name only because he doesn’t forget. Foster “Mother” #6’s astronomy obsession still lends to familiar patterns that he can trace with his eyes and an absent finger as he leans back, lies down.

Neil follows, less gracefully, shoulder blade cracking against metal, and Andrew raises an eyebrow as Neil winces.

“Shut up.” Neil scowls, squeezing his own shoulder, and Andrew notes the quiet clatter of his teeth as he rubs his still bare arms vigorously, lit faintly by moonlight.

“ _Andrew_ ,” Neil complains when Andrew rolls off the roof to land with a satisfying _thud_ of heavy boots, but he doesn’t complain as loudly when Andrew finds what he’s fumbling for in the half-light of the cabin and shoves it into Neil’s face — a jacket. His jacket, actually, the jean one that Neil wore to Eden’s.

Neil goes quiet at it, actually, which might be a bad thing, but after a moment, the rustling tells Andrew he’s put it on again.

It is, in fact, very cold. So Andrew wriggles between the seats to find more — his backpack of clothes, a crinkly plastic bag that he thinks he knows the contents of, and a worn, soft thing that he closes his hand around and can’t let himself put back.

He emerges from the car with his spoils, pushes the backpack and the bag onto the roof, takes a moment to pull the last item on, and heaves himself back up.

“What’s this?”

“Pillow.” Andrew slides the backpack to an appropriate pillow height and opens the bag, tossing it between them. “Chocolate peanuts.” _Like old times._

A pause, then, “Are you wearing my hoodie?”

“Maybe.”

“Andrew.”

Andrew falls back against the pillow and rubs his hands through his hair, runs his fingers against the lines Neil shaved along his head, growing in now. Stares at the moon.

“Ask me for a secret.”

Neil lies down next to him. “Why are you so angry with me?”

“Was,” Andrew corrects.

“You were still angry at me last night.”

“I wanted you to be angry at me. For being angry with you. I wanted you to hate me.”

It’s a truth he’s known for a while, not fully, but subconsciously. Because he hated himself, and he could not punish himself enough. Neil’s hatred was punishment, one he despised the moment he brought it upon himself, the moment he met his own eyes in Eden’s bathroom and realized exactly what he’d done. Silently icing Neil out. Bringing him to Palmetto. Ignoring him in favor of Roland.

Neil exhales, soft. “So are you mad?”

“That’s another question.”

“You never answered my first one,” Neil says, and there’s a challenge in his voice, an irritatingly endearing one. One that could twist into a tease in a normal conversation.

The choking sensation at the back of Andrew’s throat says that this is not a normal conversation.

“Because it feels like it has to be a matter of time before you leave me, too,” Andrew says, as emotionlessly as he can.

Neil sits up and buries his head in his hands. Andrew watches him, rolls a hoodie string between his fingers, lets windchill bite at his uncovered digits.

“Why do you think I’d leave you?” Neil mutters. “Fuck, god. You think all those years mean nothing to me?”

“Such is the mantra of the foster parent, over and over and over,” Andrew says.

“But _me_ , Andrew? You think _I’d_ go? Just like that?”

“Dan and Matt are friends enough, Neil. You want to go home to them, and your college town, and your place to belong.”

“Yes, they’re friends. They’re…they’re close friends, they’re important to me,” Neil admits to his knees. “And Goldenfield is — more of a place to belong than Columbia was, definitely, because my mother and father ruined any chance of that.” He turns. “But — you need to know they’d never replace you.” A soft, shaky breath. Then, half-voiced, “Drew, nothing could. You’re where I —”

His voice runs out entirely then. But Andrew hears the unspoken word.

“I’m not mad,” Andrew says. “I’m…” _Sorry. So fucking sorry._

“Me too,” says Neil.

Andrew drops the hoodie string and fights back a shudder as Neil’s eyes trail to his sleeve and he takes a bit of the hoodie in his fingers, like Andrew had done last night, and tugs slightly. Andrew is helpless as Neil’s forehead creases, but he smiles, lightly, quietly, and asks in a creaky voice, “Why are you wearing my hoodie, huh?”

 _I’m in love with you_ , he thinks, and “I’m in love with you,” he says.

Neil blinks, stares. Does not yank away, demonstrate disgust, does not even drop Andrew’s sleeve. He just sits there — moonlight whispering as kindly across his face’s contours as the sunlight had illuminated it that morning, wind gently ruffling his hair — and he searches Andrew’s eyes.

Finally, he sucks his lip between his teeth even as a smile spills, and reaches for Andrew. Whatever Andrew expects, it is not the yank of a hoodie up over his head and the strings pulled tight to eclipse Andrew’s sight, and Neil snickering ridiculously.

Andrew pulls back up the hood to glower as impressively as he can, but he can’t for long because Neil is so very close, nose practically brushing his.

“For someone as intelligent as you, it’s shocking that you couldn’t figure out that I’ve been in love with you this whole time.”

His nose is very cold pressed to Andrew’s, and when Andrew does what he’s been wanting and buries his hands in Neil’s messy hair and pulls him closer, Neil’s lips should be cold, too, but they are warm, warm, warm under Andrew’s, especially when they part.

Andrew presses closer, hazily curious if the rest of Neil is as warm, when Neil jolts and grabs at his arms, breaking away to yelp.

That’s right, they’re…on top of Andrew’s car, in a sea of chocolate covered peanuts scattered across the roof, and Neil is hanging onto him for dear life so he doesn’t slip off the side.

“I’m very happy to make out with you,” Neil hisses, like he can tell Andrew is chewing back amusement at his unfortunate predicament, “ _inside_ the car.”

“Dealbreaker,” says Andrew, scooping up a peanut to pop into his mouth. “Here, or not at all.”

Neil raises an eyebrow and lets go, sliding to the ground and opening the door. “That’s a shame.”

Andrew gathers the peanuts, feeling like the warmth that seems to have seeped from Neil’s bones into his will melt all the chocolate in his hands. But when he climbs into the car and Neil is in his seat leaned all the way back, looking at him _like that_ — Andrew doesn’t mind all that much if a few chocolates are lost in his clamber over the console to silently assure Neil that they can, in fact, make out inside of the car, too.

* * *

“You never told me you were gay,” Neil says.

Andrew presses his knuckles into his cricked neck and scowls down at Neil, who is flopped half on, half off of the back seat with an arm slung across Andrew’s stomach. That had been how they fell asleep, still trading small kisses.

It is too early for this. The one saving grace is that his brain has not decided to panic at the proximity. (But also, it’s a bonus that he is still encased in soft sweatshirt fabric that smells like Neil.)

“So, that was because…?” Neil continues, trailing fingers up the letters of his own hoodie on Andrew’s chest, sleepily watching their progress.

Andrew suddenly feels a lot more awake, mostly because the light touch is sending the good kind of shivers down his spine. He wraps his own fingers around Neil’s wrist. “Why do you think.”

“You liked me,” Neil guesses, smug in his realization.

“And you didn’t like anyone,” Andrew says. “So why this?”

“I like _you_ ,” Neil says simply, and he’s still sleep flushed and his hair is a complete mop at this point and Andrew huffs because he wants to kiss him again.

“All you have to do is ask,” says Neil, and grins.

Andrew thinks maybe they haven’t lost the ability to read between each other’s lines entirely. Says, “Come here?”

Neil does, and only finally breaks away to sit up and sputter when his phone trills an alert, because they have reception, the both of them, have _had_ it, for who knows how long now.

Andrew rolls his eyes and thumbs open a call to a towing service. As it is answered by a bubbly woman, he props the phone to his ear, detailing with as little engagement as he can their location, the problems with the tire, the car make and model.

Neil tolerates this for a solid minute of staring down at him, playing with a loose button on his stolen jean jacket, before raising an eyebrow and mouthing, _yes?_

Andrew is in the middle of listing out the license plate by memory in monotone. He feels his own eyebrows scrunch, but he nods, because, _yes_.

And he is not opposed to Neil suddenly ducking close enough for his breath to play across Andrew’s neck, he is the _opposite_ of opposed to Neil beginning to press long, open mouthed kisses along the column of his throat and across the underside of his jaw, but…

“Sir?” asks the woman on the phone, because Andrew has forgotten the next number.

“I’ll… I’ll have the paperwork when they get here,” he says, in a tone not at all even, and hits the end call button to toss the phone somewhere between the seats.

* * *

August 31st, at a rest stop

* * *

September 5th, in the middle of an apartment strewn with items from pre-summer packing that is very, very empty

* * *

If Andrew thinks, maybe whispers, “love you,” to the phone, to the man holding his own phone with the same text conversation open many, many hours away…well.

No one else is there to say with any certainty whether it happened or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nora: they never say i love you  
> me: ok but i raise u this – what if they’re childhood best friends to lovers i think they definitely would?????  
> -  
> anyway thanks so much for those of y'all leaving comments on every chapter,, ur my life my love my everything,,, being able to write this fic really meant a lot to me and i deeply appreciate y'all talkin to me about it so very much ;_;

**Author's Note:**

> chat to me abt aftg on tumblr @ [foxy-exy](https://foxy-exy.tumblr.com/) or check out links to my other socials with cosplay & other content in [my carrd here](https://kayizcray.carrd.co/)!  
> -  
> comments keep me goin and especially mean a whole lot to me on this fic in particular, please please do leave em (sorry i'm terrible at replying tho i do lov each and every one of u ;_;)  
> 


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